jackson hole, wy

imprints in the sky

limb by limbs

teton peaks

the snake slithereth

togwotee pass or your favorite camping spot

teton up

these are from my labor day trip to wyoming with jenna...
hope you like them.
click to enlarge.
-me

lighten up

so, sometimes it is necessary to take life seriously... to overthink the details, to proclaim the seriousness of life, and to always be in control.

but most of the time it's not necessary.

for example, i have 2 great friends in los angeles that are in entertainment: one a scriptwriter, the other a music manager.
they both work hard, are successful, and go for it in their careers. but they also don't sweat the setbacks, don't give a shit if things don't go exactly their way, and they always have a positive outlook. they also admit they don't have all the answers, and go with the flow and make things up along the way if they have to. they work hard, but play hard. they don't take themselves and their self-importance seriously... which is a good thing.

so, lighten up. we're specks of sand in a galaxy. yes, we each have meaning, but take it easy. don't be so serious about yourself. if things work out, awesome. when they don't... it's ok. things will come around. life will keep moving. everything is going to be ok.

boarding gear... it's on.

saturday mornings

Two things make my weekend mornings more enjoyable:

Coffee and The New York Times.

I've started drinking matte b/c it makes me less jittery
and doesn't make my ears ring as much b/c of my tinnitus,
but i still like to drink coffee - especially with a good newspaper.
besides, matte is very very boulder. drink it too much
and you might forget about bruce springsteen, hunks of bbq'd
pork shoulder,and american beers like rolling rock and miller high life.


Why The New York Times?

Because the articles are incredibly descriptive, smart,
and interesting.what other newspaper will simultaneously
have articleson a hole-in-the-wall new york pizza joint,
lupe fiasco's debut album,traveling in patagonia, mario batali,
and noam chomsky's book?

On other notes, fall is here in Boulder. It's snowing in the
mountains,but here in Boulder it's all about nice consistently
crisp autumn days.last weekend i bought a snowboard
(salomon amp), bindings (burton custom),and
boots (vans with the rad steel lacing system).
i also bought the fivemountain pass (arapahoe basin,
keystone, breckinridge, vail, beavercreek). this will winter will
be a new adventure in learning how to board and
having a hell of a lot of fun in the process. oh yeah!

And after the labor day trip to jackson hole, i have new new
travels ahead.first, going to oxford ohio this coming
weekend for seth's wedding. then going to new york city for
my birthday at the beginning of november.
i've already managed to convince the people at the woody
guthrie archives in nycto let me in the door
and look through rare unpublished guthrie lyrics.
i'm also planning to make it to mario batali's
(molto mario) restaurant "babbo" in nyc and have
the best meal ever recorded on planet earth.
in addition to that, the all-star lineup of tyler, caroline,
aniko, and iwill all be in the same city at one time.
should be epic. i don't plan on sleeping
too much. did i mention epic?

ok, time for me to get off this thing. peace.

also, i took the above pic of the berlin wall in 2001.

from the garden...

my grandfather has passed on

it was a long week this week. on friday i got the news that my grandfather, known as grampy to a few and mayor olexia to others, had passed away in his sleep. it's been a tough week, filled with many tears and sorrow. i went back to mingo junction, oh with my sister and stepped back into time... into a small steel town once vibrant but now lifeless and rusted out.

it was my first funeral as an adult. i saw my grandfather in his casket. he had deteriorated terribly in the past several weeks, but they did the best to give him the appearance of the man we loved and knew.

but to me, that wasn't the point. he could have looked absolutely like himself, but that really wouldn't matter. i wasn't looking at the man i knew, it wasn't the spirit and personality and energy that made grampy... grampy. that is the person i miss. call me religious, call me whatever, but i just don't see how someone can believe that death is the end. there is more to life than what we see, i do know that.

Check out these links:

A Newspaper article honoring my Grandfather

Obituary

So, As Grampy said, Let the good times roll. And just take it one day at a time... life can end any moment, so live each day richly.

-me